Understanding Hezbollah

Hezbollah began as a small, militant group and in roughly thirty years has grown into a significant force in Lebanese politics, across the region, and on the world stage. Most attention has gone to its military capacity, but this book turns to its cultural and political work, which has been studied far less.

At the center of the analysis is the idea of Muqawama, the resistance movement across the region, which the author presents as a counterhegemonic current that Hezbollah has helped to shape and sustain. The group's founding premise holds that Islam is a religion of resistance and that the poor, who have finally chosen to act, are its true heroes. Accordingly, Hezbollah has put social justice at the heart of its agenda and works to draw ordinary activists into its cause.

From the mid-1990s, the organization forged alliances that gave it soft power inside Lebanon. Those alliances set it against the dominant Shi'ite elite and the Maronite-Sunni establishment, as well as against Israeli and American influence in the region. The author contends that this ongoing resistance, in its military, cultural, and political forms alike, is essential to Hezbollah's sustained success.